The loss-making private school announced it would be closing down three months before the general election..
Right-wing newspapers have tried blaming the closure of a Northampton prep school involved in an abuse inquiry on Labour’s VAT rise, despite the school having operated at a financial loss for several years.
In his memoir, Princess Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer alleged that he suffered physical and sexual abuse at the school in the 1970s, between the ages of eight and 13.
The police has said it is continuing to carry out inquiries into historic abuse at the school.
The Daily Mail and Daily Express stirred up faux outrage with headlines claiming that Earl Spencer’s former school was “the latest victim of Labour’s VAT raid on fees” and had been “forced to close after Labour’s brutal tax raid”.
The Telegraph quoted Reform UK MP Richard Tice, saying: “We are just two days into the brutal socialist attack on independent schools and another prep school has fallen.”
He added: “Children will suffer huge disruption, and teachers and support staff will lose jobs.
“This is the idiotic price of Labour’s crazy ideology. Sadly, many more will fall. The legal cases by parents against the Government must be accelerated to stop this carnage.”
What the article failed to mention, is that Tice is a trustee at Maidwell Hall School, and signed off the decision for the school to close.
In a document filed with Companies House in March 2024, which was signed by Tice, Maidwell Hall School announced that the company would be wound up. The school will close at the end of the summer term this year.
It wasn’t until 29 July last year that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that VAT at 20% would be introduced on private school fees from 1 January this year.
In a statement on the closure, the school said it had “for many years been operating at a financial loss”.
In 2022, Maidwell Hall faced “almost certain insolvency” and was only saved from closure by merging with another school, Uppingham School, which repaid a six-figure bank loan to keep Maidwell Hall afloat.
So much for the closure being due to Labour’s VAT “brutal tax raid”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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